CHAPTER LXXIV.
1774.
Lady Dunmore and Children—Gayety of Williamsburg—Boston Port Bill—Fast-day appointed—Governor dissolves the Assembly—Resolutions of Burgesses—Convention called—The Raleigh—Mason's Opinion of Henry—Patriotic Measures—Convention—Jefferson's "Summary View."
Late in April there arrived at the palace in Williamsburg, the Right Honorable the Countess of Dunmore, with George, Lord Fincastle, the Honorable Alexander and John Murray, and the Ladies Catherine, Augusta, and Susan Murray, accompanied by Captain Foy and his lady. On this occasion there was an illumination, and the people with acclamations welcomed her ladyship and family to Virginia. The three sons of Lord Dunmore were students in the College of William and Mary in that year.
When the assembly met in May, Williamsburg presented a scene of unwonted gayety, and a court-herald published a code of etiquette for the regulation of the society of the little metropolis. Washington, arriving there on the sixteenth, dined with Lord Dunmore. At the beginning of the session the burgesses made an address congratulating the governor on the arrival of his lady, and the members agreed to give a ball in her honor on the twenty-seventh; but the sky was again suddenly overcast by intelligence of the act of parliament shutting up the port of Boston. The assembly made an indignant protest against this act, and,[572:A] imitating the example of the Puritans in the civil wars of England, set apart the first of June, appointed for closing the port, as a day of fasting, prayer, and humiliation, in which the Divine interposition was to be implored to protect the rights of the colonies, and avert the horrors of civil war, and to unite the people of America in the common cause.
On the next day Dunmore, summoning the burgesses to attend him in the council chamber, dissolved them in the following words: "Mr. Speaker and Gentlemen of the house of burgesses, I have in my hand a paper published by order of your house, conceived in such terms as reflect highly upon his majesty and the parliament of Great Britain, which makes it necessary for me to dissolve you, and you are dissolved accordingly."
The burgesses repaired immediately to the Raleigh,[573:A] and in the room called "the Apollo" adopted resolutions against the use of tea and other East India commodities, and recommended the annual convening of a congress. In this measure, as in the appointment of committees of correspondence, Virginia took the lead. North Carolina promptly followed her example. Notwithstanding the untoward turn of events, Washington dined with the governor on the twenty-fifth, and passed the evening with him, rode with him to his farm, and breakfasted there on the following day, and attended the ball given on the twenty-seventh in honor of Lady Dunmore.
Further news being received from Boston, the members who remained in Williamsburg held a meeting on the twenty-ninth, at which Peyton Randolph presided, and they issued a circular, recommending a meeting of deputies in a convention to assemble there on the first of August.
A dissolution of the assembly had been expected, but it had been supposed that it would be deferred until the public business should be despatched—toward the latter part of June. Consultations and measures for the preservation of the public rights and liberties were conducted and matured very privately, and by very few members, of whom Patrick Henry was the leader. George Mason, who arrived in Williamsburg in the latter part of May, says, in a letter to a friend: "At the request of the gentlemen concerned, I have spent an evening with them upon the subject, where I had an opportunity of conversing with Mr. Henry and knowing his sentiments, as well as hearing him speak in the house since on different occasions. He is by far the most powerful speaker I ever heard. Every word he says not only engages, but commands the attention, and your passions are no longer your own when he addresses them. But his eloquence is the least part of his merit. He is, in my opinion, the first man upon this continent as well in abilities as public virtues, and had he lived in Rome about the time of the first Punic war, when the Roman people had arrived at their meridian glory, and their virtue not tarnished, Mr. Henry's talents must have put him at the head of that glorious commonwealth."
Mr. Mason found the minds of all at Williamsburg entirely absorbed in the news from Massachusetts. The burgesses, at their own expense, sent to their counties copies of the resolution adopted against the Boston port bill, in order that it should be ratified by the people. Mr. Mason, as other members probably did, directed that his elder children should attend church on the day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer, in mourning. The first of June was observed as set apart by the house of burgesses. The same day being the time fixed for the discontinuance of the use of tea, the ladies, before that day, sealed up their stock, with a determination not to use it until the duty should be repealed, and resolutions of sympathy and encouragement, and contributions of money and provisions, were sent from Virginia for the relief of "our distressed fellow-subjects of Boston."
In the midst of these excitements John Page, of Rosewell, was elected president of the Society for the Advancement of Useful Knowledge.
In the latter part of June, Washington presided as moderator at a meeting held in his own county, Fairfax, and he was made chairman of a committee appointed to draught resolutions on the alarming state of public affairs, to be reported at a future meeting. He about this time warmly supported the patriotic measures, in a correspondence with his neighbor and friend, Bryan Fairfax, who adhered to the Anglican side in the dispute. On the twenty-fourth of August he wrote to him: "I could wish, I own, that the dispute had been left to posterity to determine; but the crisis is arrived when we must assert our rights, or submit to every imposition that can be heaped upon us, till custom and use will make us as tame and abject slaves as the blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway."
The Fairfax committee framed resolutions, intimating that a persistence of the government in its measures of coercion would result of necessity only in a resort to the arbitrament of arms. These resolutions were adopted by a county meeting held on the eighteenth of July, and Washington was elected a delegate to the convention which was about to convene. This body met on the first day of August, (although Dunmore had issued writs for a new assembly,) its object being to consider the state and condition of the colony, and to appoint delegates to congress. A new and more thorough non-importation association was organized. Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, Washington, Henry, Bland, Benjamin Harrison, Jr., of Berkley, and Pendleton, were appointed[575:A] delegates to congress. Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee were listened to with delight, and Washington said, "I will raise one thousand men, subsist them at my own expense, and march myself at their head for the relief of Boston."[575:B]
Mr. Jefferson was elected a member of this convention, but was prevented from attending by the state of his health. In the interval before the meeting he prepared instructions for the Virginia delegates in congress, in which he assumed the ground that the British parliament had no right whatever to exercise any authority over the colony of Virginia. These instructions being communicated through the president of the convention, Peyton Randolph, were generally read and approved of by many, though considered too bold for the present. But they printed them in a pamphlet, under the title of "A Summary View of the Rights of British America."[575:C] The following excerpts are taken from it: "History has informed us that bodies of men as well as individuals are susceptible of the spirit of tyranny." "Scarcely have our minds been able to emerge from the astonishment into which one stroke of parliamentary thunder has involved us before another more heavy and more alarming is fallen on us." "The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counsellors. The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest; only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail. No longer persevere in sacrificing the rights of one part of the empire to the inordinate desires of another, but deal out to all equal and impartial right. Let no act be passed by any one legislature which may infringe on the rights and liberties of another." "Accept of every commercial preference it is in our power to give for such things as we can raise for their use, or they make for ours. But let them not think to exclude us from going to other markets to dispose of those commodities which they cannot use, or to supply those wants which they cannot supply."
On the subject of slavery Mr. Jefferson used the following language: "The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in these colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state. But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa, yet our repeated attempts to effect this, by prohibitions, and by imposing duties which might amount to a prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by his majesty's negative; thus preferring the immediate advantage of a few British corsairs to the lasting interests of the American States and to the rights of human nature deeply wounded by this infamous practice."
In consonance with these opinions, the convention adopted the following resolution: "After the first day of November next we will neither ourselves import, nor purchase any slave or slaves imported by any other person, either from Africa, the West Indies, or any other place."
Mr. Jefferson's pamphlet displays a thorough knowledge of the history and constitutional rights of the colony; it breathes a fiery spirit of defiance and revolution, and the rhythmical splendor of elevated declamation in some of its passages is hardly inferior to Junius. If some of its statements and views are extravagant or erroneous, yet it is bold, acute, comprehensive, luminous, and impressive. This pamphlet, it is said, found its way to England, was taken hold of by the opposition, interpolated a little by Edmund Burke, so as to make it answer opposition purposes, and in that form it ran through several editions.
FOOTNOTES:
[572:A] May twenty-fourth.
[573:A] The Raleigh tavern, a wooden house, is upwards of a hundred years old. There was formerly a bust of Sir Walter Raleigh in front of the house. The ball-room in the Raleigh was styled "The Apollo." There was a tavern in London called "The Apollo" in 1690.
[575:A] August eleventh.
[575:B] Life and Works of John Adams, ii. 360.
[575:C] To be found in Amer. Archives, published by Congress, fourth series, i. 690, and in the Congress edition of Mr. Jefferson's works. See also Memoir and Correspondence of Jefferson, 100, 116.
